All work and no play makes Jack (and Melanie) a dull boy, so we took off last weekend for a trip to Washington DC in celebration of the start of Spring Break at WVU. We’ll be doing the more traditional break activities (wet T shirt contest, Jello body shots, balcony surfing) at home on the deck in the woods where only the deer, turkeys, and other such critters can laugh at us.

Our day on the Mall found cool temperatures and low clouds. We were expecting the Cherry Blossom Festival and instead we got a grey day with light rain. It makes for fast walking, but interesting pictures of the Washington Monument.

If you’re familiar with DC and the Mall you can tell that we took the Metro to the Smithsonian stop. I love this part of the Mall because of the Freer Gallery. They hang one of John Singer Sargent’s most compelling oils, “Breakfast in the Loggia.” Light traffic in the museum gave me 15 minutes of uninterrupted viewing, just leaning against the opposite wall.

Of course, the Freer has an excellent collection of Whistler’s work. I like most of his work for different reasons. The symphony in white series is lovely beyond my words. The image here doesn’t do justice to the brushstrokes in this particular work. If you ever get to Washington DC and you like paintings, you must visit the Freer just so you can see how the brushstrokes create the effects.

And, then, there’s the Peacock room. The only reason I’d like to have a LOT of money is to create rooms like this for myself and Melanie. That, and a private jet and a chaffeur. Otherwise, we’re still living in the woods, scaring the critters with our silly Spring Break games.

The Freer is also featuring a ceramics exhibition, “Parade,” as designed by Gwyn Hansson Pigott. I am not a ceramics and pottery kind of guy and usually I think of them as pretty ashtrays (yes, I am a clod and if it didn’t kill you, I’d still be chain smoking Lucky filterless cigarettes), but this exhibition struck me like a slap in the face. Normally museums display vases, pottery, ceramics, etc. with a fairly staid, educational method and a long print description of the materials, technique, period, artist, yada-yada, kill me now, Lord, where’s an empty chair I can use? Pigott’s Parade, however, is an installation performance of art using ceramic objects. She is an active ceramic artist herself and was given free access to the Freer’s collection of such objects mainly from Asia, but also the Near East. Pigott selected pieces, then created artistic arrangements of them. These photos cannot do justice to the display. For the first time in my long life of looking at art, ceramics hit me in the asthetic guts. Gwyn Hansson Pigott’s Parade is simply one of the most beautiful and compelling works of “installation” art I’ve ever seen.

Outside the Smithsonian buildings is another kind of art, the gardens. Late March is still a bit early for the full performance, but even this early in spring, the gardens are lovely and blooming. These shots were taken after one of our favorite activities, eating. We’d found a “meals on wheels” stand behind the Smithsonian gardens. Hmmmm, hot dogs.

Here’s a shot of Melanie on our first afternoon. We’re eating at Raku’s noodle shop, just across from our hotel, Jury’s (if you look behind Melanie’s left shoulder you might be able to make out the logo on the building). I found out about Jury’s from my work with the Brookings Institution. It’s the hotel they use for their guests. The hotel is right on Dupont Circle which is a fabulous DC neighborhood. Lots of shopping, lots of book stores, and some great food and drink. Like this shot.

Me and my martini with three really big and tasty green olives. I don’t want to sound extreme, but Jury’s bar serves some of the best olives I’ve ever had in a vodka martini. Sometimes big green olives are a bit rough and chewy, but these were like chocolate. Vodka News: my nephew, Clif, who is a professional chef, recommended that I try Svedka vodka. I did. If you like vodka, give it a try. It has that smooth taste, feel, and bite of a premium brand like Grey Goose, but costs only one third as much. Back to the entertainment.

Obelisk is the best restaurant in Washington DC and maybe the best in the US. I hesitate to tell anyone about it because it is a small room and can be a tough reservation.

The chef clearly is not interested in getting big because this place has been around for awhile now and it is the same this time as it was the first time we ate there 10 or 15 years ago. This shot gives you some sense of how small the place is (36 seats).

We had a bottle of Chianti, a great 5 course appetizer round, a fabulous raviolini secondi, and an outstanding sea bass for the entre, all followed by a tangerine cake and fruit with a sabayon sauce. But the real treat was a burrata cheese appetizer. They’ve been doing this one for a couple of years now and I hope they never stop serving it. You can read more about this new, modern Italian cheese, but you’d really rather eat it. Burrata is a bit like buffalo mozz cheese, only better, if you can believe that.

But, the best reason to visit Washington DC is what it means. Everytime I visit the Mall I feel proud to be an American. One of my favorite views of the Mall is from the stairs of the Capitol looking down to the Washington Monument. When I had my first trip to DC after becoming an administrator at NIOSH/CDC, I remember standing on those stairs and feeling differently than previous trips. I felt a sense of responsibility and commitment. I also remember standing on those stairs shortly after September 11, 2001 when I was called to DC on “lessons learned” planning. The Mall was very quiet and nearly empty even though it was a lovely Fall day. The sense of responsibility and commitment was even stronger then. And even though today was a cool, misty day, the Mall was crowded with people and families. And there was a demonstration at the Pool across from the Capitol with people shouting through a loudspeaker in many different languages . . . America is a helluva thing.

God bless America.

In my last post, I predicted that Hillary Clinton will earn the Democratic nomination and win the general election because she possesses superior and proven persuasion skills compared to all other candiates. While it would be possible to create an elaborate scientific demonstration here (define key terms, operationalize those definitions, quantify and analyze it all), for my purposes here, I think that just looking at candidates who get where they are using the concepts in the Primer and who follow the Rules is sufficient. The hardest trick in applying this style of analysis is keeping your own biases out it all. Chances are pretty good, for example, that if you are a lifelong Democratic voter, it is almost impossible for you to rate George W. Bush as more effective with persuasion than either Al Gore or John Kerry. Try to look at the campaigning effectiveness of the three men to control your understandable bias.

George W. Bush was inside his father’s failed 1980 primary run, then inside for the successful 1980, 1984, 1988 Vice-President and Presidential campaigns and inside with his father’s failed 1992 campaign. Bush then ran and won two consecutive Texas governor elections before making his 2000 run. That range of experience with Presidential campaign is priceless and gave him better overall persuasion skills compared to Gore or Kerry. Think about it.

Al Gore won four Congressional campaigns, then two Senate campaigns, and, most importantly, lost one bid for the Presidential nomination in 1988. He saw the two successful Clinton campaigns as the Vice Presidential candidate but was clearly not with the inner circle before he ran against Mr. Bush in 2000. While this is an impressive campaign resume, it is still clearly weaker than Mr. Bush’s, especially at the national level. It is this national level experience that I think is most telling about a candidate’s persuasion skill.

John Kerry’s campaign resume was considerably weaker than Mr. Gore’s. He was elected Senator in 1984, then re-elected in 1990, 1996, and 2002 before making his Presidential run in 2004. Prior to 2004, Kerry was never a serious contender for the nomination and had never had an insider role in a Presidential campaign. While he got close in terms of votes, from a persuasion perspective, he never had a chance.

Thus, if you use campaign experience as a rough proxy for “persuasion skill” it helps to mitigate the natural political bias you would have when evaluating politicians. And, you can do this kind of campaign comparison between Presidential nominees for as far back as you care to take it. The man with the better campaigning record (”persuasion skill”) is much more likely to win it all.

When you look at the political scene today, no one comes close to Hillary Clinton’s national experience. It is truly a case of Snow White and the Democratic Dwarves. Barack Obama captures attention and looks like the next New New Thing, but his campaign resume is just slightly stronger than a lot of active college kids going to elite universities. His Illinois Senate election is a triumph of unique circumstance where “third variables” played a huge role in success (much like the earlier Democrat charismatic, Bill Clinton - remember Ross Perot and that little thing called the End of the Cold War?).

I think that the accusation made against Hillary Clinton, that she is insincere, a politician on the make, is exactly indicative of her skill. Remember the rule, all bad persuasion is sincere! Mrs. Clinton is precisely insincere and that makes her deadly. She also knows another rule: It’s all about the other guy, stupid. If it moves you, she’ll use it no matter how painful it is for her. I would also cite her for another rule: Great persuaders can either be effective or famous, but not both. Hilary Clinton is decidedly not famous as a persuader. She’s perceived as wooden and manipulative and obvious. And yet here she is, the front runner. She’s Richard Nixon, reincarnated as a woman.

Am I the only one who sees these qualities in her?

Let me make some predictions that test my hypothesis.

1. Barack Obama will explode during the campaign and make an incredibly stupid move much like John Kerry’s inexplicable response to the Swift Boat attacks of 2004. That will come from campaign inexperience. Further, the Clinton campaign will lull Obama into saying and doing stupid things again much like the way Bush manipulated John Kerry into his famous, “I voted against it before I voted for it.” foolishness. This too will come from campaign inexperience.

2. The Clinton campaign will not make any serious mistakes. It won’t run out of money. It won’t have to explain itself for long periods of time. It will get brutally bad press coverage, but Clinton will not snap like Nixon at his “last” press conference. She will soldier on competently meaning that she won’t accidently kill her chances.

3. The Republican candidate will need a flawless campaign AND a “third variable” to win. Bill Clinton had Ross Perot (which took votes from Mr. Bush) and the End of the Cold War (which made Clinton’s foreign policy inexperience irrelevant). Remove either of these “third variables” and Bill Clinton is just another Michael Dukakis now teaching at a community college. Hillary Clinton is not going to need good luck like this, but the Republican will. The most likely “third variable” that would kill Hillary’s chances and aid the Republican is a serious third party candidate, probably from the anti-war left. If I was running a Republican campaign, I’d be doing everything I could to outrage the anti-war left of the Democrat party and provoke them into mounting a serious counter-campaign against Mrs. Clinton after she wins the nomination.

4. Clinton’s opponents will typically look a day late and a dollar short. Like General Eisenhower’s admonition, she’ll get there the first-est with the most-est.

5. Clinton’s campaign messages will drop nicely into a four step sequence: Who am I? What do I believe? What’s wrong with the other guy? Join me on that shining city on the hill. As identified in an excellent book on applied persuasion, “The Spot,” by Diamond and Bates, good campaigns move voters through four stages in sequence, Identity, Positions, Attacks, and Future. Both of Bill Clinton’s campaigns followed this sequence and are, for my money, the classic exemplers even better than Reagan’s campaigns. Mr. Bush’s campaigns struggled here, but had such poor competition from Gore and Kerry, respectively, that even a weak effort won the prize. Hillary Clinton is the “iron-butt” grind who masters the details.

I’ll post more from a persuasion perspective as the campaigns develop.

People who demonstrate more effective persuasion skills are more likely to get nominated for the Presidency and then more likely to win the general election. Don’t think about their public speaking skills; that’s just a small part of persuasion skill. Think about the people they attract as staffers and campaigners and volunteers and donors. Think about how they run strong campaigns with good finishes. It seems rather obvious, but persuasion is a crucial skill here particularly as manifest in campaigning.

Thinking only about the proven persuasion record of the various people announced or likely to announce, it is clear to me that Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani are head and shoulders above their competitors in each party. I predict that each will earn the nomination of their respective party, barring, of course, some unforeseeable bolt from the blue (cancer recurs with Mr. Giuliani, for example).

Clinton played a major role in all of her husband’s elections and thus saw first hand how to run winning Presidential elections. She knows what it takes to persuade and influence people to get a nomination. She also has won two Senate elections which proves she knows how to make the final decision in campaigns and come out the winner. No one on the Democratic side comes close to her range of persuasion success.

Giuliani has won several NY city elections with campaigns that he clearly designed and directed. He has worked on several winning Presidential campaigns, but not within an inner circle of advisors. No one on the Republican side comes close to the range of his persuasion success. Mr. McCain seems to be the current alternative, but he has proven that he knows how to lose the primaries and the only person to lose a nomination then comeback to win a later one (and the general election) is Ronald Reagan and he lost the first nomination against a sitting President seeking election (Gerald Ford).

If this persuasion analysis holds true and Clinton and Giuliani are nominated, I’d predict that Mrs. Clinton would win the general election. Her first hand experience with successful Presidential campaigns gives her the decided advantage over all Republicans, including Mr. Giuliani.

Think about it. Consider this list of nominees since World War II and the characteristics of the ultimate winner. Consider the past campaigning experience of each man. Persuasion skill is typically decisive in the ultimate winner.

2004: Bush versus Kerry

2000: Bush versus Gore

1996: Clinton versus Dole

1992: Clinton versus Bush

1988: Bush versus Dukakis

1984: Reagan versus Mondale

1980: Reagan versus Carter

1976: Carter versus Ford

1972: Nixon versus McGovern

1968: Nixon versus Humphrey

1964: Johnson versus Goldwater

1960: Kennedy versus Nixon

1956: Eisenhower versus Stevenson

1952: Eisenhower versus Stevenson

1948: Truman versus Dewey

Thus, a persuasion analysis suggests that Hillary Clinton is a lock to be nominated President and to win.

Today the good people at Center for Science in the Public Interest offer us Chinese Food (Part Deux). If you pay close attention to news or else live in the food wars of postmodern nutrition, you’ll recall Part Une from 1993 when CSPI captured headlines with its first expose on Chinese food. If you missed that headline: FAT!!! The CSPI message caused quite a stir back then in 1993 when we were still naïve about the dangers of food and thought that eating was a risk-free activity. Now, thanks to the good folks at CSPI and their brothers and sisters, we know that food is bad for you in virtually all forms and that if you eat, you will surely die. Unless you subscribe to the Nutrition Action Newsletter (now only $10 a year) in which case you will still surely die, just more slowly.

Part Deux rediscovers what CSPI discovered with Part Une in 1993: FAT!!! However, like the good persuasion agents they aspire to be, they know you can’t simply say the same thing over and over again, so they pushed their crime scene investigation tactics harder to discover: SALT!!! And, what’s even trickier about those Chinese food folks is that they hide that FAT and SALT in the VEGETABLES, thus hitting the Trifecta of Perfect Sin in postmodern nutrition. Vegans around the world are reeling. FAT and SALT in their beloved Chinese VEGETABLES?!? Add a zest of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, bake in the oven of Global Warming, and you’ve got the Perfect Storm. Why do you even get out of bed?

CSPI ain’t what it used to be and it’s curious to ask why. When they first made the scene in the early 1990s, they could dominate the mediascape like the Rolling Stones, Apple Computer, or Nike. And this was way back in the day before cell phones, Internet, and cable TV. Right? Just 3 TV channels and the elite print media that you could count on fingers. Today any fool can capture somebody’s attention through YouTube, but 15 years ago you had to be Mick Jagger to jump on the top of the heap. And CSPI did it with its fabulous PR tricks on restaurant food. And movie theater popcorn. And Italian food – remember the heart attack on a plate, fettucini Alfredo? Boy, those were the days. And, weren’t those guys at CSPI all that? And now . . . nothing but second acts and all the postmodern hipsters still quote Fitzgerald from the 1920s on that: There are no second acts in American life.

What happened?

First, realize that we are talking persuasion here. Yeah, there’s all that eat and you will surely die scripture, but the text is meaningless without persuasion because if you declare truth in the woods and there’s no one there to hear it . . . the spotted owls will not nest. Stated more directly and sincerely – CSPI cannot do good without persuasion despite its good intentions, good science, and good donors.

Second, realize that we are talking about a group that once could dominate the media agenda in a most charming fashion. CSPI invented postmodern nutrition advocacy. In the 1990s you couldn’t swing a handful of overcooked pasta without hitting a CSPI warning piped directly through the mainstream media and now they are just another fish swimming in the sea. If CSPI really is a center for science and if science is irrresistible, then food science is a killer persuasion app. Just do some flashy PR to generate Reception in the Standard Model, and the rest is the science of falling off a log as persuasion gravity pulls everyone to the ground once the CSPI PR has gotten you on the top of the ladder. Without them, we’re all pining away for the day of their mentor, Ralph Nader, and unsafe at any speed headlines and spotlights, although after that little incident in 2000 maybe it’s best to leave Mr. Nader out of the picture.

Third, realize that the science of nutrition in no way supports or even needs the PR politics of postmodern nutrition. The Western World has known since Genesis that if you eat, you will surely die, and, as a Big Message, science really doesn’t have much to add to that except technical terminology, bar charts, and an insatiable demand for public funding. Seriously, name the new, Holy Cow! I Had No Idea, contributions of nutrition research beyond the standard Leave It To Beaver advice from mom about eating? Stated another way, if postmodern nutrition did not exist, how would the world be worse?

All together then, realize that groups like CSPI are exemplars par excellence of applied persuasion and can be understood, analyzed, and evaluated from that light. Let us begin.

Let’s start with a weaker argument: Consider the title of their Part Deux effort on Chinese food: “Wok Carefully.”

How clever. When doing research on Chinese food, let’s mock Chinese pronunciation of English words with an ironic title. Why don’t they work in images of bound feet, top knots, and opium dens? CSPI has always tried to lead the PC curve and here they are defaming a nationality, a racial and ethnic group, and an ancient tradition of cooking. Can you imagine the PR folks at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association coming out with something like, “Wok Carefully?” Okay, since CSPI has good PC credentials, this one will slide under the radar, but it is still bad persuasion to mock nationalities and peoples and even if no one in the chattering classes (except, gulp, me) is pointing this out, believe me, it is still having a negative psychological effect. And worse still, it is a bomb waiting to explode. Think about some anti-CSPI zealot showing up at an event with someone dressed like a Hollywood stereotyped coolie carrying a sign, “Wok Carefully.”

Now, consider a stronger argument: The political environment of the early 1990s. CSPI scored its greatest successes with a Democratic Congress and White House. Please keep your shirt on and think about this. As one of the Rules state, “Great persuaders don’t need rich uncles, kindness from strangers, or third party vote splitters.” CSPI was supposed to be a great persuader in part because they had both science and great skill. If you’ve got these qualities it doesn’t matter who’s President or who controls Congress. You’ve got the Truth, baby, and the Moves to present it. And in 1993, CSPI looked like it had the Truth and the Moves. Except, that as the political winds changed, so did the impact of CSPI. This is not possible if you are a Great Persuader especially when armed with the Truth of postmodern nutrition science.

Finally, consider the “science” in all of this. No one argues about the science of gravity and its implications when standing on the top of a tall, rickety ladder. If you doubt gravity, please jump at your pleasure to prove your pudding. Right now, a lot of people are claiming they understand “gravity” (e.g. nutrition science, human-caused global climate change, diets that save everyone’s life, and we can’t forget: HRT for menopausal women), but when they jump off the ladder no one falls, because there is no gravity and there is no science . . . just advocacy and sincere persuasion efforts.

I’ll leave you with a homework lesson. You’ll need to collect data on this and analyze it. There’ll be a lotta math and maybe some science, too.

The hypothesis you’ll test: CSPI helped create the obesity epidemic in America.

Look at the population statistics on American weight status. Before CSPI hit the big time in the early 1990s Americans were maintaining a largely healthy weight status (typically measured with BMI which you can read all about). After CSPI finds the media spotlight and vaults into Congressional hearings and markups, then American waistlines expand dramatically. Think about that. Before CSPI’s media magic, BMIs are good. After CSPI, America gets real fat. I’m hypothesizing perhaps for the First Time in Modern History that an advocacy organization made things worse for its advocacy and that life would have been better (leaner and gentler) without the advocacy. Advocacy that both invents problems and offers failed solutions to problems that would have never occurred without the advocacy! Sounds like AARP, doesn’t it?

If you eat, you will surely die.

Katy at Sway, Inc. contacted me about conducting surveys of people taking online courses for their use of various social media Internet sites. I took the survey myself - which they should probably throw out because of my Biblical age and painful lack of experience with MySpace - and it looks legit. You don’t have to provide your email address so unless the folks at SurveyMonkey who are running the survey have invented some new nefarious spam tactic, you might want to give it a try. I am not involved with Sway or SurveyMonkey (although I like both company names) and receive no professional or consulting benefit from your participation. Katy did promise that she would send me a “reward” but if you’ve read the Primer, you know just how ambiguous that term can be. My mom used to reward me with her famous “German chocolate cake” that tasted like a cross between boiled cabbage and a Hershey bar left in back seat of the car. I’ll keep you posted on Katy’s reward.

Here’s the survey link.

And, Mom, I really love your German chocolate cake. Really. It doesn’t taste anything like cabbage. I was just making a joke to appear hip and groovy for the kids. But, next time I’m back home, let’s just get a Joan Murphy cheeseburger instead.